Banks would then become instruments of political persecution and totalitarian groupthink instead of institutions devoted to the provision of banking services to the citizenry at large. The price of political dissent would become far too high for many citizens. The public square would quickly degenerate into an echo-chamber of opinions approved by the banking establishment.
The Politicization of Banking and the End of Freedom Continue Reading
It’s well known that employment has impacts on not just an individual’s economic outlook, but their health as well. The idea that we could have somehow suppressed the economy in favor of preventing mortality and impact to health was a false tradeoff. The cost of destroying livelihoods has impacts to health and life expectancy.
Two States, Two Job Markets Continue Reading
As more and more investment funds demand that the companies they invest in meet the standards, and banks also make such requirements to an increasing extent, those who fail the test may face difficulties with financing.
Blessed Are the Cigarette Makers in UN’s World of Woke Continue Reading
Corporatism abolishes the competitive dynamic of competitive capitalism and replaces it with cartels run by oligarchs. It reduces growth and prosperity. It is invariably corrupt. It promises efficiency but yields only graft. It expands the gaps between rich and poor and creates and entrenches deep fissures between the rulers and ruled. It dispenses with localism, religious particularism, rights of families, and aesthetic traditionalism. It also ends in violence.
A Genealogy of Corporatism Continue Reading
Stakeholder capitalism inevitably creates a tyranny of minorities, and especially highly ideological minorities (because a shared ideology reduces the cost of organizing). Minority stakeholders will succeed in expropriating majority ones. Minority tyranny is the big problem with democratic politics. Extending it to vast swathes of economic life is a nightmare.
Stakeholder Capitalism is an Oxymoron Continue Reading
If you haven’t changed your thinking over the last three years, you are a prophet, indifferent, or asleep. Much has been revealed and much has changed. To meet these challenges, we must do so with our eyes wide open. The greatest threats to human liberty today are not the ones of the past and they elude easy ideological categorization. Further, we have to admit that in many ways the plain human desire to live a fulfilling life in freedom has been subverted. If we want our freedoms back, we need to have a full understanding of the frightening challenges before us.
Twenty Grim Realities Unearthed by Lockdowns Continue Reading
Reputation and trust is a bit like capital. The opinions that peers and customers have about a person, institution or business is earned over a long time through honesty, reliability. Consistent virtuous action is a form of investment.
How the Medical Industry Burned Its Trust Capital Continue Reading
Economics alone cannot tell us if any cost is too much to “save one life.” But economic thinking can help us understand that preserving human life entails bearing costs. It requires resources and people with skills. We must provide ourselves with the means to bear those costs if we wish to continue to have the ability to preserve human life in the future.
The Economics of Lockdown Panics Continue Reading
The introduction of digital commerce in the late 20th century threatened a new age of commercial freedom that came to a screeching halt with the lockdowns of 2020. In this sense, lockdowns were not “progressive” at all but profoundly conservative in the old-fashioned sense of the term. It was an establishment fighting to preserve and entrench its power. Perhaps that was the whole point all along.
How Lockdowns Bolstered an Industrial Cartel Continue Reading
During the Covid debacle, kids were locked out of school or otherwise condemned to an inferior Zoom education for up to two years. What were the alternatives? Unfortunately, since the New Deal, the federal government has severely restricted teenagers’ opportunities for gainful employment. But new evidence proves that keeping kids out of work doesn’t keep them out of mental health trouble.
The Best Life Lesson for a Teen Is a Job Continue Reading
Economic illiteracy is an important part of the explanation of why there was such broad acceptance of the pandemic policies. And also why there was very limited skepticism among common people. Had they understood economic reasoning, they would have been inoculated (if you excuse the pun) against being deceived by experts. They would have been able to see through the promises and would have asked the necessary questions.
Why Economic Cost Was So Seriously Neglected Continue Reading
In a word, American fiscal governance is broken and broken badly. Owing to the Fed’s massive monetization of the public debt over last several years Washington has lost all sense of the economic costs and consequences of massive borrowing. And that’s because there has been no “crowding out” and no spiraling interest rate signals from the bond pits of the type which historically kept Washington pols close to the fiscal straight and narrow.
The Battle Against Inflation Is Nowhere Near Won Continue Reading
